Keynote Speakers

Unsettling Responsibilities in Arctic Tourism

Bryan Grimwood, Associate Professor, Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo.

In this presentation, I seek to disrupt settler colonial narratives that permeate meanings and practices of responsibility in Arctic tourism. Settler colonialism represents a set of social power relations that perpetually strive to erase Indigenous societies and title to lands in order to allow for the construction and continuation of a colonial society on the expropriated land base. In Canada—the specific settler colonial context within which my relationship to the Arctic is situated—settler colonialism has steered (and continues to steer) not only state policy directions and development regimes, but also taken-for-granted nation-making narratives that essentialize and silence Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and relating to land. The power of these narratives is tethered to their invisibility, often as common-sense ways of “doing good” or “being responsible”, coupled with their denial of any violence being done. Arctic tourism, I argue, is an especially potent social force through which settler colonial narratives are perpetuated. Drawing on narrative methodology and community-based field research in the Canadian Subarctic, I begin by locating settler stories that move through responsibilities associated with, enacted within, Arctic tourism. Next, working from the premise that resisting settler colonialism necessitates fostering practices, knowledges, and life stories grounded elsewhere, I illuminate Indigenous community narratives of responsibility relating to sacred ancestral lands. My interpretations take aim at piercing the power and invisibility of settler colonial relations in tourism, troubling the stories settlers tell, and assembling new narratives of settler responsibility within Arctic tourism and Arctic tourism research. If storied and performed beyond conventional industry-oriented discourses, Arctic tourism might just enable settlers to identify with their responsibilities as beneficiaries of settler colonialism.

Bryan Grimwood is trained as a human geographer and engaged scholar, Bryan’s research focuses on tourism and Indigenous Peoples, tourism ethics and responsibility, northern landscapes, and outdoor education. His research is informed theoretically by relational perspectives of nature and morality, and draws on diverse qualitative methodologies and principles of community-based and participatory research. Bryan is co-editor of the forthcoming book New Moral Natures in Tourism (Routledge) and several special journal issues, including ones on tourism moralities and mobilities (Tourist Studies) and care ethics in tourism education (Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism). Bryan sits on the editorial boards of Leisure Sciences and the Journal of Ecotourism, and co-chairs the North American chapter of the Critical Tourism Studies network.

Turbulent indigenous objects - controversies around cultural appropriation and tourist activity

Britt Kramvig, Professor, Department for Tourism and Northern Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

As the focus of this conference indicates, tourism involves multiple actors and interests. This paper addresses controversies surrounding the use and misuse of Sámi objects and Sámi cultural practices in Tourism. In Sápmi, as in other countries with indigenous populations, disputes arise on issues of cultural appropriation. These disputes are played out in public spaces and via social media. They include questions of how, by whom and under what circumstances traditional Sámi objects and cultural practices are made use of.